GPU Supports Multiple Displays In Driverless Cars

Supporting the trend of driverless cars, Imagination has announced a new GPU core that can power multiple, ultra-high high-resolution displays for cluster, Head-Up Display (HUD) and infotainment. This will allow advanced infotainment features including 5G-based 4K video streaming to improve the passenger experience.

Claiming an 80% fillrate density improvement over the previous generation, the four-cluster PowerVR Series8XT GT8540 GPU can simultaneously drive up to six 4K screens with complex UIs at 60fps.

The company said that car OEMs will be fitting multiple displays in car interiors in 2018. Leveraging the GPU’s built-in hardware virtualization capability, automotive OEMs can deliver secure, high-performance graphics capabilities for a vehicle’s many displays.

The company noted that a GPU capable of full hardware virtualization is important as more in-car infotainment systems move towards richer operating systems, such as Android which offer capabilities to run Apps, with services and applications that need to be protected against intrusion or data corruption.

The GPU can support up to eight applications or services running in separate containers simultaneously, for services to be deployed or removed without affecting others running at the same time.

The company claimed that “the GPU enables higher levels of system integration, reducing costs, whilst maintaining the safety critical requirements of the design.”

The product also offers automotive OEMs a flexibility to design their systems to prioritize either graphics or compute-based applications.

For instance, the Series8XT GT8540 can support long-running compute workloads on a single Shader Processing Unit (SPU) for ADAS functions such as lane departure warning, blind-spot detection, and surround view, amongst others.

Other tasks, such as infotainment and cluster, can run on the second SPU, using prioritizing mechanisms to reach system performance targets.

Dominique Bonte, Managing Director and Vice President, ABI Research, says: “With the PowerVR Series8XT GT8540 Imagination Technologies continues to prove that it is a leader in the automotive space. As the automotive industry moves closer to introducing Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous vehicles, powerful GPUs will be vital to power multiple high-resolution display. With distraction concerns removed in driverless cars, additional opportunities for advanced infotainment features including 5G-based 4K video streaming will emerge in the longer term. Imagination is in a strong position to support this progression. The ability to run multiple workloads over each SPU is a potential game-changer for the automotive industry.”

The PowerVR Series 8XT GT8540 is now ready for licensing. The PowerVR two-cluster Series8XT GT8525 has customers in segments including automotive and mobile.